Praise the Lord and Pass the Iron
January 18, 2004
I’m a believer.
Praise the Lord, but I have seen the light! Hallelujah! Can I have an “AMEN!” from the congregation? Gather round, my friends, for your Uncle Gonzo’s “Come to Jesus” meeting.
Once more I have heard from whiny types who sniff at the efforts of Glenn Sacks to go after David and Goliath T-Shirts. I’ve heard his efforts decried as humorless, whining, and the ever popular “Acting Just Like Feminists.” And I have examined it all, and pronounced myself converted.
You all are absolutely right. I mean, who could fail to see the humor in gouging out the eyeballs of boys, throwing rocks at them, smearing them with feces, and all manner of humiliation. Boys can take it. They’re strong. They need to learn to suck it up and be men, dammit, not little children.
And the rest of their shirts. I mean, just because they have a “Mammy” on them with references to Fried Chicken doesn’t mean they’re racist. Stereotypes of Chinese laundries aren’t racist either. I swear, some people get upset about the littlest things, do you know what I mean?
How do you call these things bashing? It’s not like someone can really get hurt by having rocks thrown at them – now stones, that is something different. They used to kill people by throwing stones at them. They called it stoning. But rocks? Pshaw.
Dammit, the more I think about it, the madder I get. Don’t you know that objecting to things is un-American? Don’t you know that boycotting things is anti-capitalist – downright Communist?! What kind of Americans are you all? What kind of parents? Neitschze said that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and here you are denying your sons the opportunity to be stronger! Why I can think of no better exercise than dodging stones – er, excuse me, I meant rocks – and turds.
Worthless and weak. Are we raising the next generation of pansies, or what?
It’s just good clean fun. And I am a big believer in good clean fun. It is my life’s goal to fill both my life and everyone else’s with a laugh a minute. In fact, I think we need to help David and Goliath out in their good works. The poor guy, Todd Goldman (dgoliath@tampabay.rr.com), who runs the place cannot possibly in one lifetime design and market all the shirts that need to be marketed. So what we can do is to give him that hand up that he needs.
The beauty of his simplistic designs is that anyone with a drawing program and a few minutes can easily do a parody of them. A parody, for those who don’t know, is a perfectly legal form of fair use, so long as you don’t go about selling them or making money off of them. Why, I myself have done such a parody, and I have all the artistic talent of a radish. Some people with more talent than I may want to look at that and get inspiration to work on their own takes of parodies on Mr. Goldman’s line of shirts. I’m sure he’d be amused. Heck, I did that with Windows “Paintbrush” in about 15 minutes. Imagine what could be done with a more robust program and some real talent
This is easy enough, but what then, Uncle Gonz? Heh. I’ll tell you. It’s a miracle of modern technology that one can buy a relatively cheap printer, and use special ink and paper to create iron on transfers. By making a design large enough to fit on a T-Shirt, in minutes you can have an attractive shirt that lets everyone have a good clean belly laugh. Hewlett-Packard has a great many products for this, as does Canon and Lexmark.
Some might want to make these designs single color, and put light designs on dark shirts, and dark on light shirts, or some may want to do shirts in full color. A pack of Hane’s T-shirts cost what? $10 for three? Even better – put them on the famous “Wife-Beater” style of shirt for a real hoot! The irony there is profound indeed.
I’m willing to bet that school administrators and even feminists will see at once the humor when your son shows up at school wearing one of these shirts! I can just see them laughing until the tears roll down their eyes, beating the floor in spasms of laughter. And forget the idea that your daughters might somehow be hurt when you dress your sons up smartly in one of these garments of your own making. I’m sure they will feel the love, as you let your boys have their own laughs with images of girls beaten, maimed, killed, lobotomized and otherwise degraded.
How could anyone accuse you of being mean spirited? It’s surely no mean spirited to make such shirts about Boys, or Blacks, or Asians?
Not love your daughters? Perish the thought. One is as capable of loving girls and seeing the yucks in one of these shirts as they are of loving boys and chuckling at one of David and Goliath’s Tees, aren’t they? We’ve already determined that such shirts aren’t intrinsically hateful, haven’t we? No harm, no foul, as they say, right?
What will the schools do? I mean, some hypersensitive school districts which have no sense of humor have already banned these shirts, but for the rest who told you to get over yourself will most assuredly warmly embrace these new shirts as they start getting worn about. I’m sure they would never employ a double standard which might get the news media involved or invite a lawsuit from a parent, would they? Especially in California where you have such noteworthy Men’s Activist attorneys as Marc Angelucci who might get a real kick out of taking such a case. Not that Marc likes pointing out hypocrisy and double standards, he’s just doing a job.
And Todd Goldman, who has already proclaimed long and loudly, and quite publicly I may add, that he has no intention ever to create or run such girl-bashing designs, can hardly complain that his toes are being stepped on, or his property infringed. You’d be parodying him in a market he has no – pardon the pun – designs on.
I mean – where is the harm? It’s already been proclaimed far and wide from the mountaintop that shirts like that are for grins only. And by gum, it’s high time we all had a good laugh over it. I swear, where is your sense of humor? Now if you will all pardon me, I have to go get a crowbar. My tongue seems to be stuck in my cheek.
